Energy Journal: Europe’s Fracking Prevarications

By

WSJ Staff

Mar 15, 2013 6:44 am ET

It isn’t easy to summarize European attitudes toward shale gas and the fracking process—the blasting apart of energy-rich rocks with a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals—that comes with it.

Not being an amorphous, homogenous place that it can sometimes seem when politicians speak of “Europe,” the approaches of the continent’s sovereign states are influenced by self-interest based on economics and public concerns about the environment.

Certainly absent is any ‘drill, baby, drill’ approach. Even when operating within their own borders, where they can make their own rules, European nations are hesitant and bureaucratic.

Poland was supposed to be the great hope for Euro-shale. An initial estimate by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that showed huge reserves in the eastern European country, was revised much lower by the Poles themselves.

Disappointing test results led Exxon Mobil to abandon plans to frack in Poland almost as quickly as it had drawn them up. Now Canada’s Talisman Energy may follow suit, Reuters says.

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